Trump and GOP ramp up investigations on Democrats’ top fundraising platform

President Donald Trump has directed his attorney general to investigate fundraising platforms such as ActBlue, the central fundraising apparatus of the Democratic Party — escalating his effort to use his powers to target his political opponents and, in this case, the core machinery of the opposition party.

Trump campaigned extensively last year on a promise to exact revenge on his political adversaries and frequently made unsubstantiated claims about corrupt Democratic fundraising practices.

In a memo Thursday, Trump alleged that “online fundraising platforms have been willing participants in schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees.”

He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations “regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees.” GOP-led congressional committees have investigated similar complaints against ActBlue alleging those practices over the past few years, but the claims have not been substantiated.

Trump noted those probes when he singled out ActBlue in Thursday’s memo. ActBlue called the administration’s claims “baseless.”

The instructions to Bondi are the latest sign of the eroding guardrails that have traditionally separated the White House from the Justice Department. For decades, the department has made decisions on what investigations to pursue independently, to avoid any appearance of political influence.

But Bondi has taken visible steps to align the department with Trump’s agenda.

This month, Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the attorney general to investigate two officials who challenged him during his first administration: former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official. The president has previously ordered other Justice Department “reviews,” including one into what he has described as the “weaponization” of the Justice Department against conservatives during the Biden administration.

Thursday’s memo did not specify whether Trump intends for the Justice Department to pursue a potential criminal case against fundraising organizations, saying only that Bondi should “take all appropriate actions to enforce the law.” He directed her to report back on the findings of her probe within six months.

In a statement, ActBlue spokeswoman Megan Hughes called the directive “unlawful” and said it was the “latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition.”

“ActBlue will immediately pursue all legal avenues to protect and defend itself against the Administration’s baseless claims,” Hughes said.

In a joint statement, the leaders of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association said Trump’s memo was intended to “undermine democratic participation.”

“He’s trying to block lawful grass-roots donations from supporters giving just $5 or $10 to candidates who oppose him while further empowering the corrupt billionaires who already control his administration,” the groups said.

As congressional Republicans have stepped up their investigations into ActBlue, Democrats had been bracing for the possibility that Trump would try to use his executive powers to target their main fundraising platform.

Many groups and campaigns on the left have long relied on ActBlue as the most trusted and efficient fundraising engine, in part because it was built to work exclusively with liberal and Democratic groups. ActBlue essentially acts as the payment processor for those entities.

Trump adviser and donor Elon Musk alleged without evidence Thursday that the organization was “guilty of widespread criminal identity theft.”

Democratic groups, including the political organization of former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, seized on early reports about potential action by Trump to fuel their own fundraising efforts.

“Let’s be clear what this is about: Donald Trump wants to make it harder for people like you to contribute to Democratic candidates so it’s easier for billionaires like Elon Musk to buy elections,” the group Harris Fight Fund wrote in its solicitation signed “Team Kamala.”

For several years, Republican members of the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Administration committees have been investigating ActBlue’s security practices and procedures.

Last October, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Administration Committee, subpoenaed ActBlue for documents explaining the organization’s donor verification policies and what safeguards were in place to ensure that foreign actors did not “use the platform to launder illicit money into U.S. political campaigns.”

A year earlier, the same committee asked ActBlue for information about why the group had not been requiring contributors to enter their card verification value — known as a CVV — when making certain online contributions. The October 2023 letter cited “reports” that donors were able to use “untraceable prepaid cards,” such as gift cards, to conceal the identity of the giver.

At the time, ActBlue used methods other than CVV numbers to verify potentially fraudulent transactions, including an algorithm that flagged potentially problematic transactions. (ActBlue later changed its policy and requires any new donor or a donor using a new card to enter their CVV.) ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones told lawmakers the platform uses “robust security program and fraud prevention practices to verify the identity of donors, prevent fraudulent use of credit card information to make donations, and block impermissible contributions.”

Three GOP-led House committees released an interim report on their investigation this month, concluding that internal documents they have reviewed “demonstrate a lack of commitment to stopping fraud and paint a picture of complacency on ActBlue’s fraud-prevention team.”

At the time, ActBlue called the attacks “unfounded” and said they had “sharpened our resolve to fuel Democratic wins.”

GOP leaders on the committees have requested documents and interviews with former ActBlue aides about recent staff turmoil at the organization — including the departures of more than a half-dozen staffers as first reported by the New York Times. The organization has more than 300 employees.

When asked about the GOP’s investigations into ActBlue, Rep. Gerry Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement that “there is no room for grift, foreign influence, or corruption in our elections. Full Stop.”

But Connolly added that if Trump “was at all serious about cracking down on foreign corruption of U.S. elections, he would start by taking the ‘For Sale’ sign off his own back.”